We investigate cosmological features of the variable Chaplygin gas (VCG) describing a unified dark matter–energy scenario in a universe governed by the five dimensional (5D) Kaluza–Klein (KK) gravity. In such a proposal, the VCG evolves from the dust-like phase to the phantom or the quintessence phases. It is concluded that the background evolution for the KK-type VCG definition is equivalent to that for the dark energy interacting with the dark matter. Next, after performing neo-classical tests, we calculated the proper, luminosity, and angular diameter distances. Additionally, we construct a connection between the VCG in the KK universe and a homogenous minimally coupled scalar field by introducing its self-interacting potential and also we confirm the stability of the KK-type VCG model by making use of thermodynamics. Moreover, we use data from type Ia supernova, observational H(z) dataset and Planck-2015 results to place constraints on the model parameters. Subsequently, according to the best-fit values of the model parameters we analyze our results numerically.